This is what it has come to

In my neighbourhood is a name-brand primary school, the kind founded in the colonial period by some rags-to-riches chap, whose reputation in Singapore over the years has calcified into some kind of saint-like symbol of generosity, philanthropy and all-round goodness. As I was walking by the school at lunchtime, a large MPV, the kind that costs S$70,000-120,000 brand new, pulled up. An elderly man got out from the driver's side, the kind of elderly man who has a head full of white hair and wears jet-black socks with sports shoes. He looked healthy enough, but he was moving at that decelerated pace that's not quite doddering but not quite spry, either.

Waiting at the pick-up point was a boy, seven or eight years old and small as they come. He got into the front passenger seat, while the elderly man made his way to the spot on the pavement where the boy had left his school backpack, picked it up, walked back to the vehicle and placed it in the back seat. And by school backpack, I'm talking about one of those units that come with little wheelies these days. It didn't look impossible for the boy to pick up.

So the boy leaves his backpack for his grandfather to pick up. Which grandfather does. Because, I dunno, boy is small and precious, or something.

Just yesterday I was catching up on my Instapaper reads, which included Nancy Gibbs' "The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting" in TIME. The second paragraph reads:

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.

I do admissions interviews for freshman applications to my alma mater, and every year on average they're getting more well-prepped and less able to talk about anything that wasn't scheduled into their lives. Being alternately coddled and prepped-for-life clearly isn't a "uniquely Singaporean" experience of growing up, but you know, who I'm worried about is not so much the boy, but all the other people who are going to have to pick up after him for the rest of his life.

Same same but different

For lunch today I made spaghetti aglio olio with bacon and white mushrooms.

For dinner tonight I had bak chor mee with minced pork and mushrooms (and liver, which I didn't expect but didn't mind eating anyway).

It's funny what two different cultures can do with noodles, pork and mushrooms.

The final frontier

There is something about watching videos that remind me of how small our planet is, and how impossibly small of a space we occupy in the universe, and how incredibly little we know about either planet or universe, that gives me that tingly feeling inside.

This week, I got tingly while watching The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History (via Gee Len on Facebook, who shared "This Link Leads You To The Entire Known Universe")


And that made me think of one of my favourite TED talks ever, wherein the delightfully cute Brian Cox talked about the CERN supercollider (before it was completed last year). The part I love is towards the end, from 10:50 to 14:35, in which he recites what he calls "a wonderful narrative --- almost a creation story, if you'd like --- about the universe, from modern science over the last few decades".


Mmmmm ... tingly.

When I was a kid, my first adult-like ambition was to be a teacher --- pretty much par for the course for any wee urbanite who's packed off to school where teachers wield all the classroom power --- but after that what I really wanted to be was an astronomer (which I've briefly mentioned before). Not doing well in physics, or really, in any science subject in school put paid to that vague dream, but I still get a kick out of reading or seeing astronomy-related stuff (the ones I can understand, anyway). The best non-visual link I've found recently is this lesson plan for "The Earth as a peppercorn" (via Slate's "Learning To Love the Moon"), which uses a "thousand-yard model" to help people understand the relative sizes of the planets and the distances between them.

In a nutshell: even if the Earth is represented by the size of a peppercorn, while the sun by a ball 8 inches wide, even then the distance between Pluto and the sun is, well, pretty damn far. Go read and imagine it for yourself.

Okay, so now we know it's called an iPad

(Image above of my old iBook used here for nostalgic reasons. Someday not too far in the future, I don't think we'll be wrangling with keyboards like this anymore.)

Now that it's been more than 24 hours since the announcement of the iPad and everyone's had a chance to freak out about all the functionalities it doesn't have and how it's not going to be the tablet-killer everyone thought it was going to be, let us remember a few things:

• what David Pogue calls the three-phase process of the standard Apple new category roll-out.
• Lucian's tweet on an important side-effect of using the device: "No one mentioned the iPad being able to fry eggs on its aluminum back after 30mins of use?"
• sangsara's lengthy, thoughtful meditations on "The Causes of iPad Disappointment".

Me, I just wish they'd called it the iSlate instead because I'm old school that way --- I think the word "slate" has more resonance. "Slate" also makes me think of all the fun doodling goodness (literally or metaphorically) you could have with it, whereas "pad", once you get over the jokes about feminine hygiene products, merely conjures images of lined notepaper (perhaps even in that sickly yellow hue of legal pads) just waiting to be filled with, ugh, work.

Edited to add (10:48 am): Oops, except that I forgot about the HP Slate --- which I suppose tells you something about how much mind share it holds with me.

Sleepwalking

I feel like I've been sleepwalking through the last few days. Maybe it's because what I'm working on right now is related to, yet wildly different from, what I usually write and research about; nonetheless I seem to have taken to it like a duck to water. The most embarrassing part was walking into Borders on Monday and buying up one of every local women's magazine --- I must have looked like a freebie junkie. The most fun part was rambling about Singapore to a client from overseas over many beers. The most difficult part will be when I have to sit down and write up all this material in less than a week's time.

Sometimes, the more I write and talk about Singapore, the more I feel that it appears to be just like every other modern city in Asia --- but really isn't, upon closer examination. Or maybe it's natural to think that way about the city I've lived in for so long.

The other reason for my metaphorical sleepwalking is, predictably enough, that I haven't had proper sleep lately. Mistaking weekday nights for the weekend will do that to you.

I am also rather distractionable. Which, you know, makes me rather distracted.

Milton Glaser and more

A Design Film Festival is on right now, featuring a slate of eight films about different aspects of design. Tonight I saw Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight (he's the legend behind the "I ♥ NY" campaign) and tomorrow I'll be at Herb & Dorothy, "the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means."

The overall line-up's pretty impressive, featuring films about individual designers, as well as groups and movements. Check it out.

I paid how much for SMSes?

My latest mobile phone bill informs me that I sent 907 local SMSes in the last billing cycle. That works out to about 30 messages a day, which is not inconceivable considering that sometimes one message may spill over into several 160-character SMSes.

Nonetheless, 907 is a lot considering that I averaged 500-600 SMSes a month last year. Plus it added about $20 to my monthly bill ($0.05 per SMS, which is also a lot considering that the cost of zipping all that data around is negligible with all the paid-up mobile phone infrastructure in place).

Hmmm ... more WhatsApp, less SMSing.